The Conquering of Pandora, or, Never Fight Fair

by Alaricadein

Having rewatched Avatar recently due to the fact that my mother likes it one heck of a lot, and I had bugger all else to do so I wandered in halfway, I became even more annoyed at the elementary stupidity of the humans. If they were going for profit, why didn't they fight rationally, why didn't they screen the scientists they were bringing, why didn't they do something like this...

The Colonel floated in the observation bubble and watched the pinpricks of light break from the larger blaze that marked one of the other six stations set about the planet, and yet again silently cursed the annoying executive who floated beside him. He felt a vibration through through the fingers gently resting on the bulkhead, and slowly turned his head to see the shuttle launch from his station, and slowly build speed, heading towards the planet. He waited patiently, watching the shuttles lose detail and become another set of pinpricks moving through the blackness, and waited some more. He watched as each pinprick slowly settled into a straight line and gained speed, and then sharply pulled away from the planet.

The Colonel reached out with his free hand, and switched the screen behind him on, and spun to watch it. On the screen, a sphere with eighteen tracks heading towards it was displayed, each track with a timer slowly counting down beside it. He watched as the first timer neared zero, and a turned back to watch the planet through the bubble. A sharp beep sounded and he saw a a spike of light on the night side of the planet, then another, then several at once. The Colonel waited until all eighteen had hit, then turned himself and pulled himself through the hatch to the waiting command centre, to announce "The area is cleared. Land the landing force, follow the plan." He floated himself back to into his bubble and thought to himself 'Aren't kinetic bombardments wonderful?'